 Hey everybody, I'm here live for your questions today looking forward to chatting for the next 30 minutes or so. So stop by say hello. Tell me where you're from and I look forward to hearing from you. I'm just going to get our audio set up so I can see your questions at the same time as I am doing this live. Okay, here we are so I can see you hopefully you can see me. And again welcome today. So excited to be here talking to you live this afternoon this Friday started out kind of cold this morning in Boulder. Now it's up to about 55 so a little bit warmer and we're looking forward to a beautiful weekend. I am here live to answer your questions. Well, I'm waiting for you guys to pop in and say hello and send me some of your questions. Stop in, say hello, tell me where you're from. I will try to do this multitasking I'll be here answering your questions I'll be reading your questions, and I'll try to respond the best I can. If there's a longer answer I'll come back and answer those later so just stay tuned if you do have a question there that doesn't get answered. Okay, I'll come back in and answer those as I can. While we're waiting I'll just let you guys know if you've been around you've heard my new book, unexpected this is an advanced copy is coming out on March 28. So I am so so hi Ashley from Minnesota. Stop and say hello. So excited to introduce you guys to my new book. It will be available on wherever you listen to audio books or hardcover or Kindle whatever version that you prefer on March 28. So stay tuned. I'll actually be back here probably multiple times before that but on March 28. I'm doing a special live Q&A in the evening for for the book to talk about the book and so please come back and join me on March 28 that Tuesday tonight I will be here and I'll be answering your questions live. Just a little tidbit I'll start with from the book. One of my favorite quotes is here in the beginning. It says incurable doesn't mean healing is not possible. It simply means there's not a drug to reverse that condition. In the book, I tell you all about my own journey through overcoming breast cancer and Crohn's disease, overcoming auto immunity, and then later overcoming biotoxin and mold related illness, mass cell activation syndrome Lyme disease it's all in the book guys. And the best part is, it's my story but really what I want it to be as a reflection of you. When you read it, maybe you see parts of yourselves or parts of your own story or parts of your own healing journey in the story that I'm telling. And the great thing about it is I have loads and loads and loads of practical advice as well so you'll get the story and my own journey, but I have lots of these little sidebars like here's one you see the gray. This one's called living well in a toxic world. So in these sidebars I just give you loads and loads of practical tips and tricks and things on how I overcame illness. And then talks about clean air how to equip your home with air filters what types of air filters to purchase clean water the best types of water to drink the best types of water filters to get clean food and how to do that clean mind and clean body, and all the tips and tricks so, like I said you can preorder now get your copy read unexpected.com as well where you'll find this. And I hope you'll grab it. I hope you give me feedback on what you love, what was helpful for you and again is coming out March 28. It's a special offer for any of you guys who want to preorder the book if you're like me you're like oh I'll wait till it comes out right. I'm just like you, but if you preorder, and you go back to read unexpected and give us your email. We will send you immediate access to a bunch of free gifts that I put together. One is a coloring journal coloring was really transformational my own healing journey and accessing that inner creative that child like state that that playful side of and so I created a coloring journal for you to color along with the book and do some journaling exercises. There's also a free recorded lecture on mass cell activation syndrome. This is becoming more and more common. We'll probably talk a little bit about mcast today if you have any questions. Stop by say hello tell me your name leave your questions. And then the last thing is I recorded a secret audio chapter that's not available in the book you'll get access to that at read unexpected.com after you purchase preorder the book. Go back there pick up your free gifts. So that's all I'll say about that. Let's start a little bit with some of the main questions I get most commonly. First of all how many of you out there dealing with mold toxicity or chronic infection. Anybody raise your hand virtually stop in let me know your questions about this. One thing in particular that I wrote about in the book and I want to talk about is this toxic load and infectious burden and how they play together. So I have a whole chapter on how to transform toxicity. And it goes into how I really struggled with mold related illness when my office was water damaged in Boulder, Colorado, and I started getting sick from the mold did not know what it was at first and had to find out what was going on and then deal with that and get out of that place and get well and in that journey of overcoming mold related illness. I realized how toxic it was to my brain and my health and I also dove really deep in helping patients to recover from mold related illness. So one of the things I'm best known for now is literally mold related illness as crazy as that sounds so anyway, I talk about in the book toxic load plus infectious burden. I believe most patients with complex chronic illness have a combination of toxic load, meaning basically the toxicity in our environment in our bucket and as that bucket level water gets to the top and starts to spill over the edge we present with auto immunity, things like lupus and ms and Hashimoto's thyroiditis and rheumatoid arthritis all these idises. These are related to auto immunity and can be from toxic load in our environment. So in the book I talked real specifically on how to overcome environmental toxicity, how to choose clean bath and beauty products how to choose clean cleaning products and things in our household, and how to breathe clean air and drink clean water and just the practical things that actually make a huge difference in your toxic load. The issue there is that toxic load plus old infections like Epstein bar when we get mono when we're in our, you know, teens or 20s and we have Epstein bar we have mono, we get over that but that Epstein bar resides in our system, and it stays there until we get you know when you're stressed or lost of a loved one or lack of sleep and then it can pop back up. So this toxic load infectious burden is really core at the center of many of our complex chronic illnesses those of you who have unexplained headaches or unexplained fatigue or unexplained brain fog, or new onset brain conditions like, you know, subjective cognitive decline which is we also call brain fog. All of these things can be related to the toxic load and infectious burden. Many of you were bit by the ticks or spiders or other types of insects, and that could have been carrying an infection and those infections might have gotten into your system. You don't need to treat them until you get into a moldy environment or you move into a home that had water damage. And all of a sudden, this mold in your environment weakens your immune system and all of these old things start to pop up. How many of you have heard of friends or family members or people in your life that post COVID they got shingles, or they got chronic fatigue or they've had long COVID symptoms. Many mechanisms and I'm happy to talk about some of those. But what often happens is, as those T cells are impaired post COVID. A lot of these old infections are popping their heads up and people are getting shingles or they're getting chronic fatigue from reactivation of Epstein bar virus, or they're getting old Lyme symptoms cropping up like neck pain or back pain, or brain fog or fatigue. So this is really common. So pop in, leave your questions. I'm here for 30 minutes today and hear live answering your questions. Dana. Hi, Dana. Do you give your patients 40 or more supplements at a time? Oh boy. That's a funny question. I'm always conscious of the number of supplements. And when I'm with a patient, I am always asking them, you know, what's your limit? What can you take? Can you take pills? Can you take powders? How can you do this? Unfortunately, even if we eat organic, clean, wonderful whole foods, a lot of our soils are so nutrient depleted that the average apple of today has about one fifth of the magnesium as it did 100 years ago. So what happens is nutritionally, we just cannot get all the nutrients we need from food anymore just because of soil depletion and the quality of foods. So because of that, many of us, especially if we're trying to actually move the needle on chronic illness, need to take supplements for nutritional value or we need to move the needle on detox and take additional glutathione. So, Dana, your question 40 or more, I'm very conscious and I'll just check in with the patient and see where they're at and what they can do and we'll try to work within the realm of what they're able to do. But I will tell you myself, I have overcome breast cancer and Crohn's disease and mold related illness and Lyme disease and I function very well, but I do take a whole handful of supplements twice a day. And I have no problem with that because I function well I feel all my brain works I sleep well, but there's always that negotiation with the individual patient to find out what works for you and how can you incorporate into this into your life and I think that's really important. So I would say work with your practitioner, find a place where you're getting the nutrients you need but you're not overwhelmed. Great question. All right, let's go Anna. What's the difference between well call and CSM so she's asking about binders for mold. These two are prescription binders colostyramine often abbreviated CSM is one binder that's by prescription. These are both bile acid binders so our liver and gallbladder are where all the detox action happens. Our liver through phase one and phase two takes these metabolites that are toxic out of our tissues, converts them into intermediates and then in the second phase of the liver we take them into water soluble active components that actually get excreted into the bile. The bile then is either stored in the gallbladder, or if you don't have a gallbladder it's dripping out drip by drip by drip from the common bile duct. And it goes into your bowels, and our body is incredibly efficient so it's about 95% efficiency that is recirculated. So if we don't do anything else our bile acid with the toxic load is just recirculated like a miracle round in our gut. So just drop that miracle round and pull them out of your body is with binders binders are again the colostyramine and well call our bile acid binders they have a charge and they kind of pull those toxins and excess bile out through the stool. And that's what they're used for colostyramine is a very strong binder it's in powdered form typically in a packet. You mix it with water smells kind of bad. It's very powerful, especially good for binding okra toxin. Not everybody tolerates it causes constipation in some patients and well call is another prescription binder that comes in tablet form. I would say it's a little bit weaker but also less strong as far as binding minerals and things so patients who have ball issues or constipation will often use well call instead and I use them both. Nowadays I use a lot less colostyramine than I do charcoal and clay but I do use well call and personally in my own healing journey. I used well call to heal that would be taken between meals not with meals because you don't want to buy in the food you want to buy in the toxins. So great question Anna thank you. Got some more questions here so I'm just looking through. You're welcome Anna thanks for thanking me. Hi Kate Kate says my 11 year old daughter was diagnosed with severe Crohn's disease two years ago. She doesn't have classic Crohn's symptoms she primarily just had failure to grow and no tooth loss we tried. She had a parental nutrition through an energy to for 120 days to reset her gut and then transition to a specific carbohydrate diet for seven months. Unfortunately her labs didn't improve. And so they want to put her on Humira. What are thoughts. No. Kate thanks for sharing. I do want to say here I'm not here to diagnose you I'm not here to treat you I will give everything that I can to give you good information but I also want to be really clear. I cannot give you medical advice because of course it's virtual I don't have a relationship but I'm going to give you some general tips and I hope this will be really helpful for your daughter Kate. So Crohn's disease is an inflammatory bowel disease. I had that I was diagnosed 26 years old right after my breast cancer diagnosis. And there was definitely a correlation with the chemotherapeutic drugs that caused permeability of my gut. And then I also had an underlying genetic predisposition, a gene called NOD to that may be more predisposed for when that bacterial contents of my gut leaked into my bloodstream. It would trigger an inflammatory reaction and I was more likely genetically to have an over reactive immune reaction to those bacteria that went through the leaky gut the wall of the gut and create a damage collateral damage and that's one of the definitions of Crohn's this is overactive immune response. So back to your sweet daughter, Kate. Your doctors are you've tried some things nutritionally, which is wonderful, and they're now wanting to do immune modulating drugs. So in severe cases of Crohn's failure to try the, sorry, failure to thrive loss of weight or other things that are really seriously happening. Often biologics will kind of stop that immune over activation and they're not a bad idea, especially to temporarily gain some ground if she could gain some way back and you could you know gain a little bit of ground. What I would say as a function mouse and doctor is there's likely still dysbiosis so what you tried is as parental nutrition through an energy tube and then you tried to transition to the specific carbohydrate diet which is often if in mild cases of Crohn's or colitis can be incredibly helpful. Because it takes out the kinds of foods that feed the small bowel bacteria. What I would recommend you do is get a good functional doctor get stool testing get organic acid testing get blood testing. Look for dysbiosis in the colon or in the small bowel look for SIBO and CFO small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, small intestinal fungal overgrowth, you can order an IBD panel from lab core to look at anti carbohydrate antibodies. This is predictive of severity of Crohn's all those things will kind of tell you what things for her are triggering the immune inflammation, because you might need humor or some medication to calm that inflammatory storm while you look at the root cause, especially if she's going downhill or not gaining weight, but what you can do is still look for the root cause and treat that root cause to stop that inflammation in its tracks and hopefully regressed or not regressed. Hopefully, stop that auto inflammatory process and heal her body from the Crohn's. Hopefully that's helpful. Hey everybody, I just stopped by to let you know that my new book, unexpected finding resilience through functional medicine, science and faith is now available for order wherever you purchase books. In this book, I share my own journey of overcoming life threatening illness and the tools and tips and tricks and hope and resilience I found along the way. This book includes practical advice for things like cancer and Crohn's disease and other auto immune conditions, infections like Lyme or Epstein bar and mold and biotoxin related illness. What I really hope is that as you read this book, you find transformational wisdom for health and healing. If you want to get your own copy, stop by read unexpected.com. There you can also collect your free bonuses. So grab your copy today and begin your own transformational journey through functional medicine in finding resilience. Dana, what do you think of high tech air machines do you believe they destroy mycotoxin safely. Okay, so this is a great question because I have my thoughts on air filters and things so I think 80% of our environmental toxic loads comes from the air that we breathe so this is absolutely an issue and if you have one thing that you do air filters in your home or in your bedroom are a great place to start. One of the ways that you can do that is dilute the air and that'll decrease the toxic load by opening your windows or getting good airflow making sure your events are circulating, making sure that filter in your furnace is a high quality nerve rating so that you don't get the typical HEPA filtration is going to do particulate like spores and things that are a little bit larger size and that will filter out those spores. But what the real problem is for many people is mycotoxins or volatile organic compounds are VOCs. So VOCs are 2.5 microns or less. It's similar to the size of the viruses. So what you want is you want a good air filter that filters out not just a great HEPA filter, but also a good VOC filter. The ones that I have at my home and in my office are Austin Air. AirDoctor is another great brand. Those are two of my favorites. And just so that I could pass discount on to patients, our office is actually an Austin Air dealer and we do give some deep discount. So if you are interested in getting a filter, getting a discount, you can call my office and we can order those and drop ship them to you. Either way, wherever you get your air filters, you want to make sure you have a HEPA filtration system and a VOC filter so that you get both those things out the small formaldehyde fumes, smoke, and mold mycotoxins which are VOCs as well. Hi Ruth, is colostrum good for the gut? So wonderful question. I'm a huge fan of colostrum and bovine immune globulins. These things are all in a class of things that contain immunoglobulins. So what are immunoglobulins? Immunoglobulins are from our B cells. Our B cells create antibodies to certain things. And these are things that actually can passively bind candida in the gut, H. pylori in the gut, bacteria in the gut. So they are helpers from our own immune system to actually help us to bind anything that's bothersome or excessive in our own guts. And in this class, we have whey protein. Whey protein is just a protein. It is from dairy. So if you're sensitive to dairy, I would not recommend it. But if you're not, whey protein contains immunoglobulins and can be a great way to start. Now colostrum is new milk from cows or from humans, and it does contain a high level of immunoglobulins. And I use a lab. You can find it at drjilhealth.com. It's called Sovereign Labs Colostrum. Sovereign Labs Colostrum is one of my favorite liposomal colostrum products. And this is wonderful healing for those tough guts. I'm a huge fan. It does come from dairy as well. So if you're sensitive to dairy, you may want to try the third thing, which is bovine immunoglobulins at drjilhealth.com. You can find gut immune powder. Again, another of my favorites. It does not contain dairy. So for those of you who have sensitivity to dairy, you can use bovine immunoglobulins, gut immune powder or gut immune caps at drjilhealth.com. It's amazing to passively bind some of those things in your gut. So chronic diarrhea, traveler's diarrhea. You're traveling. You don't want to get sick. You're getting over H. pylori. You're treating SIBO or SIBO. You're treating excessive clostridia in the gut. All of these conditions can be aided by adding bovine immunoglobulins or colostrum. And Ruth, that's a great question because it's a great product to add to your gut regimen for healing your gut. Hi, Louise. With mold Hashimoto's traumatic brain injury being 75. I seem to be so low in many vitamins. I went off by a nutritionist advice and went downhill. What would you recommend as an essential one to take? Thanks for the question, Louise. Sounds like despite your age, you're still doing great and you're still looking into what you can do to optimize your health. That alone is going to create resilience, which I talked about in the beginning. This book is all about resilience. And like I said, you want to be sure and get your copy. So let's talk about you and vitamins. So I am actually not a huge fan of the multivitamin because it's kind of this one-size-fits-all. And who actually is the one-size-fits-all, right? None of us. So I, if I'm in the clinic with a patient, I'm looking at nutritionally their needs. I'm looking at the pathways that I want to move. For example, if someone has migraine headaches, I'm going to give them riboflavin and magnesium, which are two key ingredients, B2 and magnesium for headaches or for migraines. And say you have excessive estrogen, estrogen dominance, for some reason. I'm going to be giving you zinc because zinc tends to help the progesterone and copper will raise the estrogen. So I'll give lower copper, more zinc. Say you can't sleep or you have muscle cramps or leg cramps or you have other symptoms that might give more magnesium at bedtime. So I do individualize this, but bottom line, Louise, as you're looking for kind of a simple thing, I would say my mitovite, M-I-T-O-V-I-T-E, at DrJillHealth.com. It's one of my favorite multivitamins because it's a very, very comprehensive formula with some additional supplementation for the mitochondria. Mitochondria are the powerhouses that are like the energy production factories inside each cell that make ATP, which is the currency we need to breathe and live and do all the work that we need to do. So I love the mitovite because it has all the basic nutrients, but it also has additional supplementation for the mitochondria. So it's all four fans and alpha-lipoic acid and a few other key ingredients, CoQ10 to support your mitochondria. So check that out, DrJillHealth.com. Mitovite is my favorite. Hey, Eric, great to see you. And it looks like you're sending a link to watch a mold talk. So check that out from Eric. He's also always got great information to add. If you wish to learn about mold, the story is in four of Dr. Richie Shoemaker's books. I'm just sharing some information if you're there. You're welcome, Kate. Another Kate. Hi, Kate. Can you comment on niacin versus NAD? Does niacin feed candida? So niacin is vitamin B3. It is essential for our bodies. And NAD is a derivative from niacin. It's nicotinamide riboside or it could be another form. And these are different forms. NMR is another form and NNN is another form. All of these forms contribute to our production of NAD. And NAD is crucial for mitochondria, for detox, for so many cellular processes. And if you're in a moldy environment or you have chronic infections, you may be depleted of NAD. And so this NAD, pH and NAD recycling is essential. Niacin tends to be more causing a flushing and it's a precursor. So you still have to do several steps to create NAD. And a lot of people nowadays are doing IV or subcutaneous or inhaled or intranasal or oral NAD precursors to help that process. I do want to caution. There's been some recent studies that came out with NAD and risk of cancer. Now, I don't believe it causes cancer, but like any cellular process, cancer cells need NAD to survive and reproduce. And I think some of the studies were showing that maybe if you already have a cancer or you're predisposed to cancer, taking excessive NAD could be a risk. The data is not complete yet. And I think NAD is still a powerful thing. But like anything, even like methylation, if we push these processes too quickly without balancing all the other ingredients, you can be in for a problem. And it takes methylated vitamins like methylated B12, methylated folate B6 and riboflavin in order to process NAD. So if you take a lot of NAD, you're going to make sure that you replace those B vitamins as well. You're going to want to make sure that. Hi, Emily. She said, I've noticed that my own and others handwriting abilities are affected by being exposed to mold thoughts. Oh, I love this, Emily. As a physician, I am known for my bad handwriting. And sometimes I like to blame it on the mold, but I will just tell you that all joking aside, I have noticed that when I have an exposure or when I have brain fog related to recent mold exposure, I notice it's what it is is the fine motor skills are affected. So for your ability to finally make a, you know, JILL or whatever you're doing as you're writing is impaired just enough to impair your handwriting. And dysgraphia is the name of it. As you said, this is actually not uncommon with any toxic exposure. We see this in kids with ADD or with other symptoms. And often when we give them the detox ingredients they need and start them on a healthy path, their handwriting improves. So this is a real phenomenon, right? Emily, you are absolutely right. And so I think that's something you could watch. And for me, I have noticed my writing is worse after an exposure. Dana asked, let's see, we talked about, oh, the high ticks. I didn't really answer your question. Did I, Dana? So you're talking about these, there's a couple out there like molecule and aeroasis, I believe. These actually claim to destroy mycotoxins. So let's talk a bit about this because I have a definite feeling about these. What they do is they react with either infrared or ultraviolet radiation or some other process to neutralize the toxins in the air. All well and good. However, even though these machines don't necessarily produce ozone, that reaction to the chemicals or the compounds or the toxins in the air can produce ozone. And for someone like me who has severe mold sensitivity and has had lung issues in the past related to mold, that little bit of ozone in the air that's created by these types of high-tech filters can be very irritating to the lungs. So as a general rule, I'm not a huge fan of these. The data I just don't think is that strong as far as those patients who are very sensitive, maybe the average person. And I know they use UV light and things to alter chemical compounds in hospitals. And I don't think it's the wrong thing to do, but you need to know what kind of person you are. If those compounds are incredibly sensitive, you might be bothered by the production of free radicals in the air as that ozone or UV light reacts in the air to those molecules. So just be cautious. I've just got a couple minutes left. Kate says, I became B6 toxic. A practitioner says moldies can't process B6. So that's not a one-size-fits-all. First of all, B6 toxicity is a real thing. It's a very real. However, I would say that not all people who have sensitivity to mold are problematic with B6. It just depends on your genetics. So definitely that statement isn't true about all people who have mold exposure. And then one last question here, Louise. I was told methylated vitamins will encourage mold. Okay, so I think what you might have heard is B vitamins are sometimes grown on aspergillus. And you can actually see there if they're from Saccharomycese Surveysae, because yeast, that's Brewer's yeast contains a lot of B vitamins. And some of the over-the-counter vitamin supplements are grown on yeast, especially B vitamins. So you can actually look at the label and see if they were grown on aspergillus. Someone who has an allergy to aspergillus will probably not do well on those vitamins. I'm like that. So when I'm getting a B vitamin, I make sure that they are not grown on Saccharomycese Surveysae or any sort of Saccharomycese or on aspergillus, because both of those things can be fodder for those B vitamins. But you can get vitamins, B vitamins that are free of that. And one of my website, DrJillHealth.com, is just activated B complex. It's a really clean B vitamin with adequate levels of all the Bs that you can take that is not mold or grown on mold. So hopefully that helps. I'm going to come back again. I try to do this at least once a month. Thank you guys all so much for your time today. If you didn't get your questions answered, you can pop in, leave me your questions. I'm going to come back and read through and try to answer anything that I missed today. And like I said earlier, please stop by redonexpected.com, grab a copy, pre-order the new book, you'll get all the bonuses there. I've put together a color in journal and free audio chapter that's not in the book and all kinds of goodies and lecture on mast cell activation syndrome that should be really helpful. Anyway, thank you all so much for joining me today. It's a joy to see you here virtually and I will be back. Be sure and come back on March 28. That's the book pub day. I'll be here live for two hours to answer your questions. We can talk about the book. We can talk about Lyme. We can talk about mold, anything you like. And for now, I'm signing off and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye.